Wendy Davis continues attack on Greg Abbott’s pre-K plan

AUSTIN — Wendy Davis, Democratic candidate for governor, bashed Republican opponent Greg Abbott’s plan for educating the state’s pre-kindergarten students Monday, which she insists would include standardized testing for preschoolers.

“Four-year-olds should be coloring with crayons, not filling in bubbles with No. 2 pencils,” Davis told a crowd of about 80 people at the Texas State Teachers Association.

Davis pointed to Abbott’s education plan released in March, which proposes tying funding for pre-K programs to academic success and requiring school districts to bookend the school year with assessments for students in those programs.

Abbott spokesman Matt Hirsch told The Texas Tribune last week that Abbott’s proposal would not require testing for preschoolers and that “suggestions to the contrary are absurd.”

In a statement Monday, Hirsch said, “Contrary to Sen. Davis’ plan that calls for billions in new spending while maintaining the status quo, Greg Abbott’s plan does not impose standardized testing, and it removes the mandates from Austin and gives genuine local control and flexibility to school districts to achieve the gold-standard for pre-K.”

But, the Abbott campaign’s rebuttal hasn’t stopped Davis from using the plan as attack fodder.

Appearing with several Democratic lawmakers — state Rep. Donna Howard of Austin and state Sens. Jose Rodriguez of El Paso and Kirk Watson of Austin — Davis called Abbott’s plan “feeble” and said it relies too much on standardized testing, which the Texas Legislature worked against when it reduced the number of end-of-course assessments required to graduate from 15 to five.

Davis said providing funds to pre-K programs based on performance would create inequities between different programs and blasted the Abbott campaign for insisting it included language regarding assessments “for informational purposes only.”